Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Fishing for the Right Location? Try Landing One Instead!

Mike Mito, Sales Associate


By: Mike Mito, Sales Associate

The only constant is change and things can change in ways you would never expect or have planned for.

In fishing, real estate and oil and gas exploration location is everything!  There may be only a few choice locations that produce the desired results and those that can best take advantage of any situation are those that have the foresight, knowledge, tools, experience and skills to be flexible and prepare for any inevitability.

Adapt or die

As a child growing up in Canada I spent almost every summer in a small outport community, Harbor Deep, located in Newfoundland in Northern Canada. Newfoundland, for much of its history, has been known for its rich fishing grounds but technological improvements, mismanagement and overfishing decimated what had been a goldmine and resulted in a moratorium on the two main species of fish, Cod and Atlantic Salmon.

The changing world was already putting significant pressures on outport life but the lose of the fishing industry amounted to a death knell; Harbor Deep ceased to exist back in 2002 when the population voted to accept a resettlement agreement put forth by the Canadian government. The moratorium amounted to the loss of the only real industry in the town; villagers even faced severe fines for catching fish for their personal consumption. No fish, no jobs, no livelihood or quality of life and no reason to stick around. What had once been a prosperous little fishing village became a ghost town overnight.

I see many parallels between the fishing industry in Canada and the current situation with the oil and gas industry in the Gulf, technology has allowed us to recover more oil and at a lower cost making the financial metrics of off shore production harder to justify. It may be safe to assume that the price of oil will go up in the future, as producers who are over leveraged, poorly managed or too costly are run off by low or non existent profit margins thus limiting supply and driving prices higher; as to when that may be, it is very hard to say. Those with the vision and foresight can find value in the current market as companies are forced to liquidate or look to get underperforming assets off of their balance sheets to allow themselves to run leaner and operate within the current economic reality.

Those who bury their heads in the sand will be left in the dust while those with vision will see opportunity.

Re/Max Commercial is happy to offer for sale the following properties for the opportunistic buyer:


Feel free to reach out to us regarding our perspectives on the economy, its impact on commercial real estate and asset valuation and where we feel value can be found and how to best take advantage of the current market to position yourself for the future.

Cheers!

Mike Mito, Sales Associate
mmito@nolacommercial.com
504.838.0001
nolacommercial.com